There have been a number of stories in the media lately detailing how far hospitals will go to collect on unpaid medical bills.

Most of our insurance premiums is not insurance against above average cost but prepaid healthcare. So advocates of prepaid healthcare must explain why it s preferable to prepay than to pay after receiving care.

Problems with paying after care:

1: It can be difficult for the provider to collect.
2: Lack of ability to make decisions in certain emergency situations.
3. in some cases it causes people to wait longer than optimal to get treatment.

Problems with prepaying:

1. Encourages overuse.
2. Encourages quixotic attempts to extend the lives if the terminal.
3. Discourages self treatment.
4. Aligns providers and patient against payer.
5. Allows providers to more easily collect for care that failed to benefit the patient.

A benefit of paying in the rears is that should motivate the providers to get the patient back to a productive state.

Note the state could pay Providers after care in cases of bankruptcy putting certain limits on how the bankrupt can spend on other things .

Tyler Cowen has another post saying that Euro is in danger and that if it falls it could badly hurt the European and world economies.

It looks to me like central banking is at the root of the problem. Central banking seems to me to be prone to crisis.
1. Central banking appears to have feedback problems.
2. It is not easy for the central banks to get the money into the economy where it is needed.
3. People trust the central banks so much that they prefer money assets to real assets in times of crisis. It seems to me that it would be better if they mistrusted money and so bought real assents instead.
4. Central banks are subject to the whims of the median voter, who knows nothing about banking.

Thursday, May 17, 2012

(I kid you not, many students think a tax will be passed on to consumers, but a subsidy will be pocketed by corporations. Why you ask why, they actually think it’s in the corporation’s interest to pass on tax increases, and pocket subsidies. By which logic a $20 tax combined with a $20 subsidy, i.e. a “nothing,” would cause prices to rise by $20. Go figure.)

People are easily confused about the incidence of taxation. I have a hard time convincing my fellow landlords that in our competitive market the renter pays the property taxes. The landlords are outraged at the level of the property tax and they seem to want to stay outraged. On the other hand the renters, who should be outraged, are completely unaware that they are paying the tax but at least when I tell them the light comes on. Much of the art of modern democratic politics is to hide the costs from the majority of voters and show the benefits.

As an aside, the other day I was listening to a local radio show and one of our local politicians was going on and on about how the property tax more progressive than the sales tax as a self evident given and so we should suport the optional discretionary millage, but here in Florida there is something called the homestead exemption. The homestead exemption, exempts the first, I think it is $60,000 of the value of a home owner's primary resident from taxation but most poor people live in rentals which are fully taxed, there rental market is very competitive here so the renter pays every dime. This makes the property tax more regressive that it otherwise would be. On top of that food is exempt from the sales tax and poor spend more on food than others. Bottom line it is not clear that the property tax in Florida is more progressive that the sales tax and I bet that that politician does not know either.